It is the first time ever that Pay TV loses subscribers quarter on a quarter, as the Business Insider chart shows.

A previous post on “spotting disruption before it happens” shows the 3 phases that can be spotted before a disruption actually occurs, exemplified with the postal service.

A lot have been said about how Internet TV offers like Hulu can lure people to cut the cord and drop their Pay-TV subscriptions. Still data so far only showed that Pay-TV rather than declining was actually growing. Up to Q2 2010. For the first time ever, Pay-TV loses subscribers. Does it resemble the 3-phase pattern of the postal service fall?

Is the drop just due to the recession? or are the cord-cutters finally here?

If reports from Engadget are correct,  Apple could be soon “re-inventing” the TV too. The new Apple TV could be announced on the next  Steve Jobs keynote on June 7th, together with the iPhone HD (not according to Engadget)

New Apple TV highlights, according to Engadget:

• Very small device, with only power and Audio-Video ports. No display
• Based on iPhone OS 4
• A4 CPU, capable of displaying 1080p HD video
• 16 GB of flash storage
• Wifi-n
• Price $99

Speculating on what it could also do:

• Runs all iPhone and iPad Apps on the AppStore, plus an specific SDK for Apple TV Apps
• Includes a Safari browser with HTML5 support
• Plays any content from any iTunes library at home
• Extend iAds to video
• Can be controlled with a new iPhone-iPod Touch Remote App, that allows remote Multi-touch controls of the TV screen
• The new iPhone HD (the one previewed by Gizmodo based on  a prototype)  will sell with a dock station to connect to a TV screen and behave just as the new Apple TV
• Does not support Flash

Can you imagine all that for $99? Is the ultimate set-top-box finally arrived? Is GoogleTV dead-on-arrival ? Can you imagine the App Store model also on TV? Netflix, YouTube, all existing video apps, all games!, and all HTML5 online video that is coming…

Will Apple re-invent the TV too, based on the same iPhone OS that reinvented the phone and the tablet?

1984 might be closer than we ever thought…

The moment came when Apple surpassed Microsoft in Market Cap [*].

A few numbers:

Market Cap: Microsoft at $219 billion – Apple at $222 billion (yesterday)
Revenue: Microsoft at $58.4 billion – Apple at $42.9 billion
Net income: Microsoft at $14.6 billion – Apple at $5.7 billion
Cash: Microsoft at $39.7 billion – Apple at $23.1 billion

Microsoft is still has bigger earnings, but Apple has the momentum. Apple still sells computers, but twice as much revenue is coming from hand-held devices and music. And smartphone sales are growing faster than PCs.

Worse for Microsoft, analyst perceived that “The battle has shifted from Microsoft against Apple to Apple against Google,” as said Tim Bajarin, a technology analyst following Apple.

Google has a market cap of $151 billion.

Read original NYT Article: Apple Passes Microsoft as No. 1 in Tech

Google TV, as described by Google is about:

• Less time Finding More time Watching
• Control and Personalize what you Watch
• Make your TV content more Interesting
• More than just TV

Google TV is built on Android 2.1 and Google Chrome and Flash 10.1.

It runs all Android Apps that do nto require a phone hardware. A Google TV SDK will be available to apps developers, including tools for an IP remote control.

A version of YouTube adapted for Google TV: YouTube Leanback

Partners:

• Sony will launch Connected TV sets  and Blue-ray players integrating Google TV
• Logitech will build a Google TV Set-top-box (companion box)
• Intel Atom chips will power the devices with hi-performance video handling
• BestBuy will distribute those products
• Dish Network will have an advanced integration  with Google TV

All coming this fall in 2010. TV meets Web. Web meets TV.

Watch the Google TV keynote on YouTube.

From TechCrunch: Google TV Unveiled. It’s All About The Ad Reach

Via Silicon Alley Insider. The great turnaround of Apple illustrated in a chart.

Since the iPhone launch in 2007 Apple has been getting closer to Microsoft faster and faster. The iPad “effect” is closing the final gap. It is only a matter of time that Apple will surpass Microsoft in market cap. Apple’s “reinvention” of the phone is paying off.

When Microsoft announced Windows Phone 7,  a newspaper headline read “Microsoft follows Apple and Google and moves into Smartphones”. It is a pity (for Microsoft)  the reporter had not noticed that Microsoft had Windows Mobile phones for several years before the  iPhone…

We can call it the “delayed” disruption. It has 3 phases, that can be illustrated in the chart above showing the decline of postal mail volume.

1. Hyped Prediction. End of 90s with the Internet boom, people predict that the end of mail will soon happen.
2. False Reality. A few years later in 2005, people say mail will never die, all the opposite Internet is increasing the use of postal services, as the growth in mail volume shows.
3. Disruptive change. The hyped predictions become a reality, and mail drops in free fall.

The same can be said of CD sales, newspaper and magazines, and soon will be said of  ebooks.

And the same is happening on TV and Internet TV, as the recent debate on the Future of TV shows, when voices say that TV is weathering the Online Video storm better than Music or Newspapers. The good news for TV is that hey have some precedent cases they can learn from and adapt. But the disruption will come… only maybe a bit later.

Read the port: The Key to Spotting Disruption Before It Happens

A few days before the iPad is out I am ready to make my bet. It  will be a revolution.

The iPhone was a revolution for mobile handsets.  Nokia laughed at Apple when they launched a new phone in what was a “mature” market. Now, no one doubts that Steve Jobs was actually right when he said  ”Today Apple is going to reinvent the phone” in January 2007.

David Pogue’s review of the iPad is worth reading. “It is basically  a gigantic iPod Touch”, it could not be described in less words.

I would take from his review the insight that the iPad is no substitute for a laptop for tasks to create content, like writing docs, presentations, coding software, not to mention any more sophisticated content like photo or video editing. But it IS a great device to consume content, like reading, web browsing, watching video or gaming. And for that purpose, the experience is even better than a laptop.

The lack of Adobe Flash is an issue, but  looking at the speed that video sites  and video platforms like Brightcove or Oolaya are preparing for the iPad, it might not be a show-stopper; specially if Hulu launches an iPad application as rumored.

If after reading Pogue’s review still in doubt, BBspot.com offer a decision flow chart. Not that I agree with it, but it’s funny…

TechCrunch announces more reviews hitting the net.

Google makes $18 a year for each unique visitor. Facebook makes roughly $3.

Three observations from the chart:

1)  Google is far ahead of the others in monetizing their visitors. A sign that search advertising is much better paid than display. Facebook will need to invent something to market their ads more valuable.

2) Recently a tier-1 telco CEO demanded that Google should pay telcos  for the business they do on their networks. The yearly revenues per broadband subscriber for a telco can reach $240-$400. What Google or Facebook gets from a single user is peanuts compared with what the telco gets. What portion of Google’s revenue they want to get?

3) By chance the revenue per user for Internet giants look in the same range as what a traditional  ad-funded broadcast TV channel makes per average viewer in a year.

It would be interesting to see how Hulu would do on this chart. According to Bloomberg, the Simpsons on Hulu command a $60 CPM, while on prime-time TV the same ad would cost $20-$40 per thousand viewers. If Bloomberg is right, considering that Hulu aggregates much more content than a single broadcast TV channel, with a higher CPM, we should see Hulu go off the chart!  Assuming it could reach $100-$200 revenue per user per year, that starts to look something on which the telcos might want to ask for a share…

Distributed computing is part of the essence of Internet. The network of networks is built around distributed routing nodes (routers), that route IP packets with no central intelligence nor control. Internet protocols are “distributed” by design, and that is what gives Internet the power to scale without limits. P2P is also a showcase of the power of distributed architectures, where the client and server decentralization is taken to a extreme.

The Fuel Cell Boxes, like those of Bloom Energy in the CBS video clip above, will bring to power generation the same kind of revolution that Internet continues to bring to telecommunications. If the promise of the Bloom boxes at reasonable prices in 5 years turns true, power utility companies are going to go through a big transformation and we are going to have a much greener planet.

The video is worth watching, but if you are outside of US (the clip might not play), you can read a good summary of it here.

By the way, The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued an order last week giving Google the authority to buy and sell wholesale electricity just like a utility. Google was the first customer of Bloom Energy. Any connections?

The future of Adobe Flash is in the hands of Google.

Apple’s reluctance to support Flash on the iPhone and the iPad is putting tremendous pressure on the future of Adobe’s ubiquitous platform, present in 98% of browsers worldwide.

The Adobe Flash Player  is the engine behind 99% of  Video in the web. Adobe Flash Player 10.1, soon to be released, was supposed to take Flash Player dominance together with online video to mobile handsets. But Google and Apple insistence in an Open Web with HTML5 native video (among other capabilities) that make Flash irrelevant can ruin Adobe’s plans. Apple bet of non supporting Flash even on the iPad shows they are pretty determined to kill Flash.

Abobe is going from being the ‘good guy’ that enabled video on the Web, to the ‘bad guy’ that imposes proprietary technology and that crashes browsers too often. Is Flash doomed to die then? It is up to Google.

Apple and Google close romance is turning to an end as both turn to competitors rather than friends in smartphones, office applications, browsers, OS, and soon in tablets and ebooks.

With Chrome OS now targeting the trendy tablet feast too, the support of Flash Player on Chrome OS and Android can give an edge over Apple’s rivals.  Having all video on the web on Google powered smarphones and tablets, that would be a huge advantage to Google.

But Google could also well decide to stick to its principles and go full speed on the HTML5 open web vision, shared with Apple. If Google moves all YouTube content to HTML5, who on Earth is not going to install an HTML5 browser? Even the stubborn IE6 laggards would finally wake up and change. How long would it take for other web video properties to move to HTML5 and drop Flash?

Update: Good ZDNet post on the HTML vs. Flash war.

Update 2: Good explanation on Gizmodo about HTML5 and Flash

Update 3: Great post on TechCrunch on the Future of Web Content